“No. I want to be with you…wherever you go.”
He lowered them down carefully. The platform was so crowded they could hardly move. When they reached the dark opening of the cave, he stopped and tied the rope. After helping Fan to the ledge at the cave entrance, he lifted off the lanterns and the can of kerosene. Then hoisting himself aloft once more, he loaded the sacks of food and the ammunition onto the platform and went back down. By that time even the cave was filling with smoke.
“Will they find us?” Fan asked.
“I doubt it.” He looked down the shaft once more. He thought he could see a boot track down there he had not seen before, but in the dimness and at that distance he might be mistaken. He turned toward her. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
Drawing his bowie knife, he slashed through the ropes. The platform hit the bottom with a crash, and dust lifted. The free end of the rope rattled through the block and fell to the bottom of the shaft.
Fan gasped, and clutched his arm. Far below, in the light that came into the lower part of the shaft, lay the platform and the rope. They were cut off now, completely isolated.
Two men rushed into the space below, looking quickly around, and then looking up. From where they stood they could see nothing but the darkness and the empty shiv wheel. He could hear their voices, in astonished argument, but could not distinguish any words.
The lanterns had been set well back away from the shaft, and now they recovered them. Fan took both rifles, and he shouldered the sacks of food, and they went deeper into the cave.
Under their feet lay the dust of centuries. The light of the lanterns threw their grotesque shadows on the walls. The cave was a natural one, but there were no visible signs of habitation.
When they had gone perhaps fifty feet from the shaft they came suddenly into a fairly large room, partially lighted by a crack in the roof high above their heads. Here fires had once been built in a circle of stones.
“A temporary camp,” Ruble Noon said. “I don’t believe these people lived in caves. There’s got to be a way out.”
“Why?”
“I’ve seen villages, probably of these same people, built up on the mesas. I think they liked to live under the open sky. I mean, they built their houses in the open. Back yonder”—he pointed toward the east—“I’ve seen remains of houses, a double line of rooms, not quite square, often definitely rectangular, and always on mesa tops.”
Here it was absolutely still. Fan Davidge looked around the half-lit cave, trying to picture the kind of men they must have been, how they had camped briefly here…or perhaps this had been a ceremonial cave, only visited for some special occasion.
Ruble Noon nudged an ancient ear of corn from the dust with his toe, and picked it up. It had been shelled at some far distant time, but the rows from which the kernels had come were still visible. He counted them…ten rows.
“Do you think we can find where they lived if we keep on through the cave?”
He shrugged. “There’s no village near the cabin, and none down in the canyon, either, although I wouldn’t expect it there. These people didn’t care for canyons. That came later.”
He listened, but there was no sound.
“I’ve been all over this country, and several times I’ve found smashed-in skulls in the rows of ancient ruined houses. I think they were attacked and driven out. Over west of here there are some great houses built in hollows under the overhanging cliffs. I think they moved there and built them to defend themselves.”
He shouldered the sacks, took up his lantern, and ducked into the tunnel beyond. There was little room to spare, and often the sacks on his shoulder brushed the roof. He counted his steps, and when he reached a hundred, with no widening of the tunnel or change in direction, he paused.
It was hot and close in here. The air was difficult to breathe. He mopped perspiration from his forehead, and started on. The lanterns had grown dimmer…there was less oxygen.
Another hundred paces, but this time he did not stop. Still another hundred. How far had they come? He had been keeping track, and judged that they must now be about eight or nine hundred yards into the mountain. He was not sure of their direction, but the tunnel seemed to be going east, away from the ranch.
When he had gone another hundred steps he stopped. The lights were very low, and his breath was coming in gasps. Fan’s cheeks were streaked with perspiration and dust.
“We’ve got to keep on,” he said. “There’s no point in turning back.”
He shouldered the sacks again and went on. The tunnel suddenly took a sharp turn and opened out into a large chamber.
“Ruble…look! The lanterns!” Fan exclaimed.
The flames had flared up, as if the rounding of the corner had brought them into better air. And even as they flared, the flames seemed to bend a little. At the same time he felt a faint, fresher coolness on his cheek.
Hurrying on, they came suddenly to a ledge at the cave mouth. The ledge overhung a valley several hundred feet below, a valley Ruble Noon had never seen before. It was narrow, and the ledge itself was no more than fifteen feet across. The cave mouth was merely a gouge in the side of the cliff.
At the side there was a crack that provided a steep, hair-raising climb to the top of the mesa, more than a hundred feet above. Here on the ledge was a small spring, and they saw that there had been fires here, too. Scattered about were shards of broken pottery, most of them having a red and black design.
He glanced up the steep chimney that led to the top of the mesa. One misstep in the climb might send one crashing down and over the brink into the valley below; and anyone caught midway in the climb by someone approaching from above would be helpless.
“Will they follow us?” Fan asked.
“They’ve got to be rid of us. We know too much, and Ben Janish knows I’ve been sent to kill him.”
“Could we get out if we went back there?”
“I doubt it. I dropped the rope, and I hope they accept that as an accident and think we’re trapped. If they buy that idea they won’t follow us. In any case, a man with a rifle could shoot down that long passage and stop them.”
“But you’re not back there…why?”
He shrugged again. “Maybe I just don’t want to kill unless I have to…maybe I’m hoping there’s a way out up there.” He indicated the chimney.
It was about four feet wide at the bottom, narrowing to less than three toward the top. Broken rock, all of it loose and jagged lay along the bottom or along the side along which they must climb. Behind them as they climbed would be the vast gulf of the canyon, its bottom far below.
Obviously the people who had come to this spring, the growers of corn and the makers of the black-on-red pottery, had climbed this chute, but conditions at that long-ago time might have been far different. Much erosion had taken place, and wind and rain, ice and roots had operated here; and once they started to climb, rocks and earth in the chute might suddenly give way and slide right over them, and there would be no escape.
He lay down and took a long drink from the cold water of the spring. When he rose, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he looked up at the chute. “Will you try that with me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Once we start, there will be no turning back. Climbing down would be just as hard as climbing up. We’ll have to keep going.”
“All right.”
Still he hesitated. Perhaps as Ruble Noon, the hunter of outlaws, he had been fearless; but if so he was not fearless now. He knew how uncertain such slides can be; he realized well the danger.
“Isn’t it strange?” Fan said. “I know so little about you, but I feel safe with you. I always have.”
“I don’t know much about myself. I do know that my name was once Jonas Mandrin, that I had been a journalist of sorts, and that later I had an arms company. But that doesn’t tell very much.”
“May I call you Jonas?”
“If you like.” He took up one of the sacks. “We’d better be going now. I have no idea what’s waiting up there. They could have found another route to head us off.”
“How would they know where we will appear?”
That was true, but he did not underrate Niland, nor Ben Janish either. They were shrewd men, and Niland was playing a dangerous game, risking not only his respectable reputation but his life.
“You’d better go first,” he said. “If you slip I might be able to catch you.”
He had two sacks, but would leave one behind now. He changed the extra ammunition to the sack he was to carry, and slid a side of bacon in, too. There was food enough for several days if they were careful. The sack would make balance difficult, especially as it could not easily be strapped on.
Suddenly he heard them. The sound was distant, but it was distinct enough. They were coming along the passage!
Abruptly he turned toward the chute. “Let’s go,” he said.
Fan looked at the chute, and then said, “You go first…please.”
There was no time to argue. He tested a rock with his foot—it seemed solid. He swung his weight to it and began to climb. One step, two…three.
Using his hands to feel for good grips, he worked his way up the steep incline. Once a stone rolled under him, and he glanced back. Fan was close behind him, and beyond her was the dark depth of the canyon.
He started climbing once more. The top was such a few feet away, but the distance seemed enormous. He felt for another grip, hoisted the sack a bit to let it rest, then went on. The chute was even steeper than it had seemed. Perspiration was streaming down his face, down his ribs underneath his shirt, and his wounded shoulder was stiff. Gasping with effort, he paused again to rest for a moment. Glancing up, he could see the rim, now so close. If Niland and Janish found them now they could be shot like frogs in a tub.
He felt for a foothold, and started to push himself up when the rock gave way suddenly. He felt himself going, and with a wild grab at the wall, caught his fingers over a thin edge of rock and clung tight. Even as he grasped the edge, he felt a hand close on his ankle. Behind them he could hear rocks cascading down plunge into the canyon below.
He tugged himself a little higher. The walls of the chute were closer together here and he got one foot against the rock wall opposite and pushed himself back until his shoulders were against the wall behind him. Braced there, he drew his other leg up, with Fan clinging to his foot, but helping with her own foot.
He swung the sack over and up, landing it a couple of feet above him on the slide. Fan had her own grip now, and was edging up closer. Using his hands against the rock wall behind him and his feet on the one opposite, he hitched himself higher…a foot, two feet.
Bracing himself, he grasped the sack and swung it again, gaining only a few inches. He hitched higher, and heard voices from below. They were wondering how their quarry had disappeared, but it would be only a moment until they were discovered.
He worked himself a little higher, threw the sack and got a good lift, gaining a full yard. He started to turn around, and suddenly heard a yell below. He looked down and saw a man he had never seen before pointing up at him and yelling. “Ben! Ben, we got him!”
“Fan,” he said quietly, “crawl right over me. Come on, quick…and don’t ask questions!”
She scrambled up, and he caught her by the waist. Lying almost flat, his feet braced against the rocks on either side, he literally lifted her over and above him. It was only a few yards to the top now.
“Keep going!” he said sharply. “When you get up there you can cover me with a rifle.”
He slipped the thong off his six-gun and, gripping it in one hand, he began to hitch himself up, keeping his eyes on the space below.
Suddenly a head loomed, and instantly he fired. He heard a scream, saw a man clap his hands to his head and fall…he fell a long way, his scream trailing out behind him.
A shot hit the rock near Noon, scarring the face of the wall with white slash; then came another…a near miss.
He scrambled higher, then deliberately dislodged a heavy rock with one foot and watched it fall. It rolled over and over, fell a few feet, hit a rock, and bounded into space, hit again, and then fell clear.
With bullets smashing the rocks below him, he threw himself at the rim, made it, and rolled over. There he lay still, panting. For a moment he lay sprawled on the coarse grass, his muscles trembling with the release from strain, his mind a vacuum. When he did glance around he saw Fan near him, her face pale.
“Are we all right?” she whispered.
“We’ll never be all right,” he replied, “until they are dead, or driven away. We are the hunted, and we have gone as far as we can go.”
“What will we do?”
“We will fight. We have not hunted trouble, but it takes two sides to make a peace. The hunters like nothing better than to see the hunted come walking to them, unarmed. We have no choice now, Fan, so we will fight…fight as they haven’t yet seen us fight.”
Chapter 16
*
HE SHOVED BACK from the rim and got to his feet. They were on top of the mesa in the clear, cool air. A soft wind stirred the air around Fan’s cheek. About fifty feet away were the ruins of an ancient village, which had once been two rows of houses, back to back, but was now no more than a few shallow pits and ridges of earth, littered with fragments of the red-on-black pottery.
The wide sky was above them and around them. They stood upon an island where only the clouds were close; nothing moved about them. It was a moment of pristine stillness.
They stood a little apart, merely living the stillness, with no thought of any other time than this. A rattle of rocks drove the stillness away, and brought back with a shock the immediacy of danger.
“I’ll stop them, Fan. You look around…see what else there is.”
He went back to the rim, crawling the last few feet, then toppled a heavy boulder down the chute. There was a cry, a scramble, a rattle of rocks, and the sound of someone swearing.
That would hold them for a little while. No man in his right mind was going to attempt that chute with somebody above him ready to send down rocks.
He got up and walked over to the ruins. Here men had lived, men in an early state of civilization, men organizing their first attempts at a settled community, men thinking out the rules that would give them freedom, for freedom and civilization can exist only where there are laws and agreement.
The man men called Ruble Noon kicked his toe against a pile of earth. Tom Davidge had accumulated treasure, and men wanted it now who were prepared to obtain it, who were ready to kill his daughter, his friends, anyone. Tom Davidge had excited the greed of men, and here in these western lands men were fighting again the age-old struggle for freedom and for civilization, which is one that always must be fought for. The weak, and those unwilling to make the struggle, soon resign their liberties for the protection of powerful men or paid armies; they begin by being protected, they end by being subjected.
Ruble Noon was sore and he was tired. He wanted no more of running and fighting, but no end was in sight. He looked across the mesa toward Fan, who had walked toward the edge and was looking for a way down. Her skirt blew in the wind, and he watched for a moment as she walked the rim, occasionally pausing to look over. He went back to the chute and trickled a few small rocks over the edge, merely as a warning.
Ruble Noon wondered where, exactly, they were. They had gone into the cave and moved away from the mountain cabin, and they had traveled what seemed to be half a mile or so, and now they had emerged on top of a large mesa. From this vantage point, none of the mountains around looked familiar. Obviously he was seeing them from a different viewpoint and their altered appearance left him unsure.
Already there was darkness in the canyon. When he peered over the edge of the chute, nothing was in sight. He listened, but he heard no voices. No doubt they had decided against a
ttempting the climb for the present, or they decided on another approach. Ben Janish had ridden this country and might know a good deal more about it than Ruble Noon could recall.
For luck, he started a fairsized rock rolling down the chute. Other rocks slid with it, and for a moment he could hear the rattle and bump as they went down. When the sound died the evening was empty.
He took up his rifle and pack and started after Fan. He plodded along, putting one foot ahead of another with effort. He was dog-tired, his head ached, and he wanted nothing so much as sleep.
As he went across the mesa, he several times saw bits of pottery, usually of the same type as those he had seen at the ruins.
Fan had seen him coming and had paused beside some low brush. “It will be dark soon,” she said. “I’ve seen no path, no animal tracks. Do you suppose that was the only way up, and that they have closed it off?”
He shook his head. “There’s got to be a way. I’ve seen some steep-walled mesas, but never one that couldn’t be scaled, either up or down.”
Already a star had appeared, for night fell fast in this desert land. The air was chill. He saw a line of trees and started toward it.
Suddenly the mesa broke off sharply in front of them in a V of rock filled with trees and brush, and sloping steeply down. He saw what he wanted, a thick clump of trees surrounded by blowdowns—trees flattened by the wind and long dead, their whitening bones sprawled across the ground.
They crossed over them, walking carefully, and when he was among the trees he cut branches for a bed for Fan on the ground under the pines. Pines meant a good chance that this was a south slope. Most of the trees below them were aspen, a thick stand, almost filling the notch. The place was walled in, secluded.
“We will sleep here,” he told Fan. “The bed of dead branches out there will warn us if anyone tries to come close.”
From dead branches he built a small fire, and they made coffee in an empty can after they had eaten the beans from it. There was a trickle of water coming down from a crack in the mesa wall above them, and he put out the fire, making sure every ember was dead. Then he placed the can in a fork of a tree. Some other traveler might need it.
Novel 1970 - The Man Called Noon (v5.0) Page 13
